Factors to Consider while Buying Facilities Technology

Have you ever thought whether your facility management team is buying the right kind of technology? In order to make a successful tech purchase, you need to first identify what you need not do while deciding on or making the purchase. Making the correct choice in selecting the right technology can often be a daunting task.

In this article, we are going to highlight the factors that will help you in making the right move while buying a facilities management technology. Let us take a quick look at the points below:

• Know the problem: every business faces some problem or the other in every step and facilities management is no different as well. The key to choosing the right technology for your business is knowing what the real problem is. Recent studies show that the most successful tech buyers focus on the following factors while making a purchase:

1. Budget
2. Effective customer service
3. Improved productivity

Considering the above pointers while making your purchase will be the key to a successful business. Here you must ask yourself what are the blocks that are coming in the way of your offering an enhanced customer experience, why is your customer service quality suffering? Identify the problems that are preventing your facility management team from becoming productive and cost effective. Once you are able to identify these problems, you need to find a technology that focuses on addressing these problems. This increases your chance as a facility manager in getting the purchase approval as well.

• Research well: when you know the problems hindering your team from being productive, cost effective and offering enhanced customer experience, you move ahead to the next phase where you start the research from. Now there might be more than one product solving your problem. As per recent studies, it is said that you increase your chances of success by narrowing down your search. This research shows that successful purchases have been influenced by the following factors:

1. Simplified UI
2. Easy to search
3. Availability on mobile app

As per the research, a facilities team is able to complete more number of work orders by focusing on improving their document searchability. Also, since the facilities team are not available 24*7 to assist the customer, the technology needs to be mobile app friendly and easy to use.

• Product evaluation: now that you have narrowed down a few solutions, it is time for making the most important decision in the tech buying process. You need to consider the following factors:

1. Check out for all the references of the technology provider
2. Make your IT team and budget approver a part of the product evaluation process
3. Get a demo of the product
4. Evaluate your customer support

The best of tech buyers always consider the references while making the final choice for the technology. They also make sure that other departments are looped in and that the product has been evaluated and they also assess the kind of customer support the vendor provides. This might seem like a tedious and time-consuming process but if these factors are taken into account while making the purchase decision, you sure are to emerge as the winner.

With new technologies being introduced every day and new challenges emerging in your business, it is always the best practice to make your move in purchasing a facility management by keeping the above factors in mind.